A news story popped up on the Kingston Journal in Maine this weekend, with video of what life is like for a Kingston area family living near a 2-MW wind turbine. The family must endure as much as 70 minutes of shadow flicker a day from the turbine, which they say has been placed too close to their house.

As if living with the strobe-like effect wasn’t bad enough, the couple’s 14-year-old son has epilepsy and the shadow flicker could cause him to have a seizure. The result is, he can’t stay alone in his own home for fear of what the flashing light might do.

The video is only four minutes long, but a shocking depiction of yet another negative effect from these huge machines.

2 thoughts on “Shadow flicker in Kingston,MA: how could you live with this?”

Minor correction – that is Kingston Massachusetts (don’t be surprised if you see something like this from Kingston RI soon too).

Massachusetts has led the nation with use of public money (mostly from ratepayer surcharges, but ARRA funds, state economic development funds for low interest loan guarantees, etc.) to foster wind energy development in the state and region, often on public land. Following an installation in Hull MA which is located in one of the best wind resources in this state (39th in the US with land theoretically available with sufficient expected capacity) where the closest home was about 550 ft. from the turbine on a capped landfill, there is no such thing as too close to residential neighborhoods in MA. Setback requirements are as little as 1.1x turbine height, not the four times total height recommended earlier (ala Denmark); not 10 times rotor diameter to minimize flicker impacts recommended abroad, and placed near highways and other infrastructure to comply with MA noise policy that allows a 10 dB increase. This ignores absolute limits imposed by most jurisdictions and ignores the fact that in experienced ‘protective’ European countries limits for wind turbine noise are about 15 dB BELOW regulated limits for traffic noise. Plus coastal areas, such as Falmouth, Fairhaven and Kingston have incredibly high wind shear and turbulence, and like Vinalhaven, Maine, are expected to have exaccerbated noise impacts resulting. When Colby considered health and safety for Chatham Kent, he wasn’t concerned about health but he was concerned about ice throw but thought the setback normally used in Ontario, 2000 ft., would suffice. In Massachusetts having 100s of homes within 2000 ft. of a few turbines is considered no big deal, although they will do more than 20 minutes of pre-construction sound measurement for homes within 2000 ft. in the future.
I say all this because although there was a lot of official denial, I think developers did learn some from their mistakes in Maine, with regard to uncertainties in predictive modeling and the need to in effect add some ‘precautionary principle’. I know they do not in Ontario, put homes right to within 0.1 dB of the limit.
P.S. Hull has one of the quietest IWTs made.
Thank you for your interest in the New England states.